APS Blockchain Challenge
Blockchain technology as a tool for working with information related to land registries in the context of realty multi-risk insurance
Proposed by
The Portuguese Association of Insurers, APS, was founded in 1982, and is a non-profit association of the insurance and reinsurance companies operating in the Portuguese market, irrespective of their legal nature or country of origin. The members of APS presently account for 99% of the insurance market in terms of business turnover and human resources employed by the sector.
The Challenge
How can we automate the collection, verification and authorization of land registration information in the context of realty multi-risk insurance to ensure a prompt response to the insured? Blockchain technology can be a very useful and powerful tool for verifying and obtaining key information from the Land Registry in the context of the application of realty multi-risk insurances and disaster funds and the adequacy of premiums in the underwriting of equity risks.
Description
Can a Blockchain-based solution be used to verify, obtain and authorize the transfer of information from the Land Registry in the context of the application of disaster funds?
Context
There are several possible use cases of Blockchain technology in the insurance sector and all of them with enormous disruptive potential from the point of view of the profound changes that can provoke in the current business models of this industry. Considering the urgent need for insurers to collect as much accurate information as possible in certain areas (land, car, citizenship and other registers), one of the possibilities lies in the interoperability between insurers' products and government databases, as is the case of the Land Registry.
As demonstrated by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the example of the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 is very illustrative of the existing problems all around the world regarding situations of crises and catastrophes. During the process of reconstruction of the country, the difficulty in identifying the owners of the land subject to intervention constituted a strong obstacle to the beginning of the reconstruction work of the Haitian infrastructures.
With a Blockchain-based solution, this problem could be solved effectively by developing immutable records over which there is no doubt as to the authenticity, ownership and responsibility of the data contained therein. In this way, the records are permanently linked to the system so that they are not tampered or forged, increasing the transparency, robustness and agility of the entire process.
Having said this and considering the possibilities arising from the application of such a solution in Portugal, it is intended to create the necessary conditions for verification and obtaining essential information of the land register (whether from the Land Registry or of the carnet made available by the Tax Authority) in cases of seismic risk. Taking this approach into account, the way in which the disaster funds are applied and the adequacy of the premiums in the subscription of the equity risks can be improved.
From the point of view of the application of Blockchain-based solutions by the APS, a proposal to solve the presented problem can only gather characteristics that work the sector as a whole, approaching all the players involved and pointing to a solution that is transversal to this industry. With this challenge, we intend to:
- To have a complete view of the Portuguese housing stock so that the products presented by the insurers are as accurate as possible;
- Identify the characteristics of the property and the owner in the area of seismic risk and in the case of urban assets; and
- Use the matrix article (a key) to perform searches in the land registry; or Fiscal Identifying Number (NIF) and article matrix, the county/parish of the fraction under analysis to search the records of the Tax Authority in order to obtain information from the land registry.
Data
Examples of anonymized data that may be made available for the development of a Minimum Valuable Product (MVP) or Proof of Concept (PoC) include, but are not limited to:
- Actuarial data of catastrophes (earthquakes, floods, etc.);
- Dates of beginning and closing of the insurance;
- Dates of loss and participation;
- CAE (the Portuguese classification of economic activities) of the activity, in the case of companies;
- Type of product (Housing, Condominium, Commerce, Industry/Manufacturing, Commerce and Services, Engineering);
- Type of insured object (Building, Belongings, Building and Inseparable Belongings, Company Activity, etc.);
- Affected coverage (Seismic Phenomena, Landslides/Geological Accidents, Exploration Losses/Profits/Rents, etc.);
- Type of compensation (Total Loss or Partial Loss).
Expected outcomes
Examples of outcomes may include but are not limited to:
- Solutions that guarantee the robustness and reliability of the data provided by the different interlocutors;
- Applications, tools or services that are triggered in the event of a disaster in order to have accurate, immediate and total visibility of the affected areas, allocated coverage and compensatory payments;
- Algorithm that assures the accumulation of risk;
- Integration of georeferencing tools;
- Access features to legacy systems that allow systems transition processes.
Expected impacts
Participants will need to provide details on the impact measurement framework they would use to show how their solution:
- Ensure the harmonization of concepts in the sector;
- Ensure the agility of the Subscription, Claims and Reinsurance processes, improving their speed, dematerialization and digitization;
- Ensure the transparency of the process, the reliability of the data and the resulting benefits;
- Improve visibility on areas not covered by disaster insurance;
- Increase the transparency of the process and accelerate the process of reparation to the insured.
Please check the full regulation in PDF for this challenge.
